Les immemoriales
dal 28/2/2013 al 22/6/2013
Segnalato da
28/2/2013
Les immemoriales
Frac Lorraine 49 Nord 6 Est, Metz
To refuse oblivion in order to reinvent being-in-the-world based on respect and freedom: this desire captures well the ambition of Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala, and Cecilia Vicuna. Their art is the ephemeral, the passage, and the transmission, inhabited by the living memory of peoples and territories which the artists interweave with the present and which they use to construct the future.
Nourished by the living memory of Andean, Native American, and
Australian Aboriginal people, Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala and
Cecilia Vicuña, three artists of different generations and horizons invite you on a sensuous and poetic journey into the heart
of political issues affecting our first-world societies.
« We are now pushing the earth to a very dangerous unsustainability,
so it is time for us to hear the ancient voices in a new way. »
Cecilia Vicuña
Environmental movements, which emerged in the 1960s1 in response
to the excesses of the consumer society and sprawling industrialization, have fundamentally transformed our relation to the
world. They have managed to imprint in our consciousness the idea
that human beings are responsible for the general degradation of
the planet: the depletion of natural resources, the drying up of
water supplies, exploitation of ancestral lands, disappearance
of indigenous populations... Millennial oral traditions are becoming
extinct, and, along with them, entire segments of human culture
and history pass into oblivion.
To refuse oblivion and disappearance in order to reinvent being-in-
the-world based on equality, respect, and freedom: this desire
captures well the ambition of Agnes Denes, Monika Grzymala, and
Cecilia Vicuña. These three artists share an ethical and aesthetical consciousness which guides their approach to the world and to
others. Their art is the ephemeral, the passage, and the transmission, inhabited by the living memory of peoples and territories
which the artists interweave with the present and which they use to
construct the future2.
1- Silent Spring by Rachel Louise Carson appeared in 1962. This book was a
bestseller which popularized the term “ecology” in the United States.
2- Dedicated to "the Maori people of the forgotten time,” Les Immémoriaux, an
ethnographico-poetic novel by Victor Segalen (1878–1919) opens with a memory blank.
What might have been but an anecdotal instance of forgetfulness in the recitation
of a long litany of ancestors comes to foreshadow the disappearance of a people,
forgetful of its own lore and its own customs—of its own past.
In 1968, Agnes Denes (born 1931, Hungary), made her first “ecological” intervention in the state of New York, announcing her
commitment to environmental questions and human issues. In 1977,
near the Niagara Falls, she re-enacted the ritual Rice/Tree/Burial ——
an “allegory of the life cycle” which associates the planting of
a rice paddy; chaining together of trees in a sacred forest,
formerly an Indian burial ground; filming from the edge of the
Niagara Falls; and burying a time capsule addressed to “Homo
Futurus” of the year 2979.
Since the 1960s, the poet and artist Cecilia Vicuña (born 1948,
Chili) has been creating installations that summon the spirits of
the first inhabitants of the Andes. She literally and figuratively
weaves together the past and the present. Her Quipus are inspired
by a form of “writing” used by Indian tribes, made up of knotted
cords, which was banned by the Spanish conquerors. The long,
colored cotton cords which make up the immersive installation
Quipu Austral (2012–13) are a shimmering, tactile ode to the
communion between man and the cosmos.
Monika Grzymala’s (born 1970, Poland) ephemeral architectural
interventions are engendered by physical and imagined lines, made
from everyday, fragile materials, such as hand-made paper, scotch
tape, magnetic tape...). The artist created The River in 2012 in
collaboration with Euraba Papermakers, an art collective of
Australian Aboriginal women who use offcuts from the clothing
industry established on their ancestral grounds. Water, indispensable in the manufacture of paper, is at the heart of the
Goomeroi culture. The River floods the space of the exhibition
with thousands of suspended white paper leaves——a river of tears
evoking lost spirits.
Following the stream of water in order to grasp the thread of
life, this exhibition renews the vital connection between the
human and the Earth.
With thanks to Bergère de France (Bar-le-Duc) for their assistance in technical
production of Cecilia Vicuña’s work.
TO GO FURTHER
www.ceciliavicuna.org
www.agnesdenesstudio.com
www.t-r-a-n-s-i-t.net
Group visits in English on request
mediation@fraclorraine.org
Image: Cecilia Vicuña, Quipu Austral, 2012. Installation, sound. Photo: Cecilia Vicuña © The artist
PRESS CONTACT > CLAUDINE COLIN COMMUNICATION / TÉL. : 0033 (0)1 42 72 60 01 / VICTOIRE BIREMBAUX > victoire@claudinecolin.com
OPENING: FRIDAY MARCH 1ST AT 7PM. In the presence of Monika Grzymala and Cecilia Vicuña
PRESS CONFERENCE: WEDNESDAY MARCH 27TH
49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine
1 bis rue des Trinitaires - F-57000 Metz
Tuesday–Friday 2–7pm
Saturday & Sunday 11am–7pm
Admission free